The 2009 Governor General's Performing Arts Awards

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The 2009 Governor General's Performing Arts Awards

Since 1992 the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards have recognized Canadian artists and arts volunteers for a lifetime of achievement in the fields of theatre, film, dance, broadcasting and popular and classical music. CBC Digital Archives salutes the seven artists and the arts patron who will be feted during a gala at Ottawa's National Arts Centre on May 9, 2009: Peggy Baker, Edith Butler, Clémence Desrochers, James Fleck, Paul Gross, Robert Lepage, R. Murray Schafer and George F. Walker.

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6 radio clips

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Peggy Baker: a life in dance

Broadcast Date: Sept. 12, 1991

Peggy Baker says she loved to dance as a child. Once she realized she could make a career out of dancing, there was no stopping her. Twenty years after she began her training at the Toronto Dance Theatre, Baker has her own company and is one of Canada's foremost modern dancers. In this laughter-filled 1991 conversation with CBC Radio's Vicki Gabereau, Baker describes how she helped introduce Russian ballet great Mikhail Baryshnikov to the physical vocabulary of modern dance.

Peggy Baker: a life in dance

• Peggy Baker was born in Edmonton in 1952. As she mentions in this radio clip, she decided to pursue modern dance after an inspiring workshop with Canadian modern dance pioneer Patricia Beatty. Baker was in high school at the time.

• Baker moved to Toronto at 19 and began her study at the Toronto Dance Theatre. She was a co-founder of the company Dancemakers in 1974, with which she began to garner critical acclaim. "Peggy Baker, who's been in New York for a year, is back – looking like a million bucks, and performing as richly," wrote Globe and Mail dance critic Lawrence O'Toole in December 1977.

• Throughout the 1980s Baker lived in New York and was a member of the Lar Lubovitch dance company, touring the United States and performing Lubovitch's demanding works. She returned to Toronto in 1990 to found Peggy Baker Dance Projects and launch her career as a solo contemporary dancer.

• In 1992 Baker was named artist-in-residence at the National Ballet School, a position she still held in 2009. As a teacher she has also trained dancers at the Juilliard School, York University and many other institutions.

Peggy Baker: a life in dance

Medium: Radio

Program: Gabereau

Broadcast Date: Sept. 12, 1991

Guest(s): Peggy Baker

Host: Vicki Gabereau

Duration: 19:24

Photo:

Last updated:
May 5, 2009

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